Aside from the sheer technical difficulties of developing chips and guidance gear that small, who wants to spend $10,000 a bullet?

The 25mm smart round that's getting ready to be fielded has an electronic fuze and costs $20 a round (if I recall correctly). I would hesitate to say guiding a 25mm shell was impossible. It may require a smoothbore to eliminate spin, but if it's guided, you don't need spin stabilization. We are probably spending more than $10,000 a bullet now when they drop Laser Guided Training Rounds (LGTR) on people. The inert LGTR were being used in Bosnia I believe to take out snipers. The laser tracker is at least $50,000. Issue is not the value of the round. It's the value of the target, or the asset being protected. When you look at the cost of throwing a war, expensive ammo is a miniscule part.

It's 20$ in price, not in cost. The more you make the less it costs, in electronics.

from what i read the company was hoping to get the price down to 20 or 25 bucks a unit once they got into full scale production.

CONARC (CONtinental ARmy Command) and the Infantry School did some research on this about twenty years ago. Their "ultimate seeking projectile" was a ramjet round using a solid rocket type propellant. Basically a hollow tube with a central "spindle" to house the seeker, it stered by a thrust-vectoring ring system similar to the old Polaris SLBM. Assuming an infra-red seeker (the only thing they figured they could get into that small a space), they calculated they could attain a "circular error of probability" (CEP) of under 20cm (about 8 inches) at 4000m. Since the "ram-rocket" would continue to accelerate the projectile for roughly half ther flight-time to that range, the total time-to-target would have been a bit less than 3.5 seconds. However, the smallest package they could put it in turned out to be a 25mm Vulcan cannon shell- which really doesn't need that sort of help out to that range. Future applications of this or a developed technolgy might include aircraft cannon or low-level AAA gun systems, but I don't see it being practical in small arms..

Discovery Channel ran a show about emerging weapons systems -- OICW, etc. -- that included mention of the UK MOD spending money on developing a course-correcting round suitable to be fired from something heavy caliber (I believe the program showed guys firing a Barrett .50 cal, but it was a dramatization). Feasibility probably starts with assessing what you want it to do -- but I'd hesitate to say that it will not be possible in, say, the next decade for something like a 25mm round or something similarly largish.

They already tried the 20mm grenade launcher in the XM-29. A 25mm isn't that big a stretch. I read something recently (might have been in StrategyPage) about one of the newer rifles having a very effective muzzle blast deflector. I think it was one of the 50cal sniper rifles. If an "almost recoilless" 25mm piece could be conjured up with a bipod rest, firing smart shells long ways from the underbrush may be a viable way of convincing bad guys to take up another line of work.

This goes back to roles and purposes. A 25mm precision-guided round fired from something like a Barrett M82 would equal a very good anti-materiel weapon. But I think ilpars was thinking more in terms of a precision-guided small-arms round intended for the anti-personnel role; something along the lines of a 7.62mm weapon that could neutralize one specific individual out to about 2000m. Handy for dealing with enemy high-rankers or overambitious terrorists, especially if hostages are in the target area (Munich 1972). Nice idea, but I'm afraid not within the state-of-the-art anytime soon..

" But I think ilpars was thinking more in terms of a precision-guided small-arms round intended for the anti-personnel role; something along the lines of a 7.62mm weapon that could neutralize one specific individual out to about 2000m. Handy for dealing with enemy high-rankers or overambitious terrorists, especially if hostages are in the target area (Munich 1972). Nice idea, but I'm afraid not within the state-of-the-art anytime soon. " That is exactly what is in my mind. I know that it is not possible now. And that is the reason I have put it under Military Science-Fiction category. I am wondering what kind of technological breakthrough needed to make it possible. And how long later these kind of weapons will become possible.

I absolutely positively guarantee that a 25mm slug is an anti-personnel weapon. Don't get hung up on caliber = purpose. What's the mission and what have you got to do it with. A 25mm guided round will be here before a 7.62mm guided round. It's not only roles and purposes. It's also capability. If the 7.62mm can't reach the target, it doesn't matter what its purpose was. It the 25mm can reach the target, it has a new purpose.